Help, I'm new and ignorant.

[wolfe28]

Greetings one and all. I was "referred" to you all by one of the members of another forum, and I could use some help. I recently purchased a new to me TC New Englander .50 cal rifle. Up to that point, I hadn't really considered casting my own bullets because everything I reload is a fairly common caliber or size. Now that I have my own "front stuffer", I want to be able to cast my own shot for it, and who knows where that might lead.

Now for the questions. I know I need a pot and heat source, molds for my gun, and some lead, a dipper to pour the lead into the molds, and something to skim all the junk out of the pot, but then what? How, when, and why do you flux? What should you use for flux (I have read of everything from fluxing compounds to sawdust and candle wax)? Can I just start melting lead (probably from wheel weights), and then start casting (after I skim off the clips and other junk), or am I missing a step? Is smelting and melting the same thing?

Thanks for all your help.

D

[44man]

First, we need to know what boolits you plan on. Second, not wheel weight metal for the muzzle loader, get pure lead.
I would buy a 20# Lee pot and ladle to start. Midway or Midsouth would be the cheapest places to buy from. Take an old stainless spoon and put a long wood handle on it for skimming. Pure lead doesn't really need fluxed except to clean the surface and help return some of the lead back into the mix. Anything with carbon works and candle wax is as good as anything or paraffin from the canning dept in the grocery store.
Smelting is when you melt a pile of lead, clean it and pour ingots that will fit the pot. Never smelt in the casting pot. Use an old cast iron pot or dutch oven for that. One of those propane turkey fryers is good for smelting. You will want a Lee or Lyman ingot mold to make life easy and a cast iron dipper to fill it. A large, stainless soup ladle would work nicely.
Of course once the lead is clean, nothing says you can't cast right from the dutch oven but you might want a lead thermometer to control the heat. You will want to cast pure lead around 800 degrees. The mold needs to be pre-heated also.

[44woody]

Wolf28 first welcom to the board you do not want to use wheel weights to make ml bullets out of you want soft lead next you will need to know what kind of bullets you want to shot out of your ml you have a 50 cal I cast 3 kinds of them I will let you try some of each just for the postage give me a pm and let me know :castmine: 44Woody

[John Boy]

Wolfe, here's an article that will get you started ... http://www.nwtskirmisher.com/useful-casting.shtml

And as 44Man says ... No Wheel Weight - Pure Lead Only in your TC

[9.3X62AL]

Welcome aboard, Wolfe!

The previous posters covered the questions real well, nothing to add to your casting questions.

If your plans include deer/elk hunting, make sure that your state/province/area doesn't have "round ball only" or "flintlock only" regulations. The elongated slugs are incredibly powerful game harvesters, but a 50 caliber RB is no slouch in the venison-making department. Most T/C barrels come with a "compromise" 1:48 twist rate that works well with the elongated slugs, and with RB's until higher-end velocities are attempted. I'm in the process of "reverse-engineering" a T/C Hawken 54, with a RB barrel and (next to come) the primitive sights. Once a good load is determined, off comes the adjustable rear sight.

[Murphy]

wolfe28, welcome to the board fella!

You'll find a plethora of information here, and a ton of folks more than willing to spend the time to help you learn plenty.

As Al stated above, not much I can add to the info that has already been posted.

But if you still have questions? Ask away...that is why we are all here, to share & learn.

Murphy

P.S. I bet I'm a whole lot dumber than you. *Grin*

[1Shirt]

I agree with those who say only pure lead. However a number of years ago I used to shoot competitive round ball matches with a guy who shot just air cooled wheel weights and thin patches. He won his share of matches, including one egg shoot where the rest of us ate the raw egg. By the way, he did it with one of those old CVA two piece stock 45 long bbl rifles that looked like crap. Have learned over time never to argue with the guy who is sucessful.
1Shirt!:coffee:

[azcoyhunter]

For Ingot molds I use miffin tins.

Very handy and perfect sized

Clint

[waksupi]

I'm one of the heathens, who have been shooting WW's for over thirty years. And, I have won more than a few matches.

[mooman76]

Yes, I agree. Soft lead is best bit if all you have is WW's then I say use them. I've been using them for years also becase I had not soft lead until now!

[SharpsShooter]

Heck yeah, use your WW. I used oven annealed WW for BPCR shooting until I happened on to a large batch of pure lead. Oven annealing is easy. Cast your round ball or boolits as usual. Place them in a suitable pan and place in the oven. Set the temperature to 400* and walk away for an hour. turn off the oven after the hour and crack the door to allow the heat to escape. Let them cool and go shoot. They will work as good as the pure lead after annealing.


SS

[44man]

Sharpshooter, very good idea. I never thought of that.

[Willbird]

Wolf, what twist is in your barrel ?? That will determine whether your rifle will shoot conicals or RB the best.

I shot a HELL of a lot of LINOTYPE round balls with a denim patch and they shot just fine :-). If Dd ever figured out I was stealing his supply of lino he never said a word ;-)


You can actually do a decent job melting lead to cast from a dipper with a harbor freight cast iron dutch oven and a gas heat source. I premelt on a $8.95 wally world hot plate with a Goodwill HEAVY aluminum saucepan...total cost $9.95


Bill

[carpetman]

Has anybody ever tried making muffins in an ingot mold?

[shooting on a shoestring]

I highly recomend a plain old Coleman stove for a great heat source. I run mine on unleaded gasoline at $2.20 per gallon. Its cheap heat. Its also portable. I use in inside my shop on a bench for casting, take it outside for doing the smokey work like initial melting of range lead, wheel weights or whatever smokes too much for the indoors. Of course once you use a stove for lead, never use it for food. I've used the same stove for over twenty years. I do have to replace a generator every 3 or 4 years, clean up the burners a little. I used to keep the tank pump in shape, but now just use my air compressor to pressurize the tank. Much faster and easier.

As for WW in muzzle loaders, works fine on targets, good on most game, but soft lead could have a bit of expansion on game. WW will not. However, I shoot round balls, so I'm not looking for expansion, penetration is the quest. But for patched round balls, the balls never touch the barrel, so the lead alloy doesn't have any appreciable affect on the shooting.

For Cap & Ball revolvers, soft lead is a must. I cast a bunch of WW .375's and I could not load them in the chambers of my Remington copy using the revolvers ram. Pure lead loads easily.

[Dye]

Has anybody ever tried making muffins in an ingot mold?

Carpetman
Yes, Do it all the time ,make brownies and corn bread.Coat with a little lard
and dust with flour.and pour the batter in and bake. Saeco,RCBS,Lyman and Lee. With the Lee you get 2 small ones for people on a diet .

BE carefull Dye

[hivoltfl]

Just a suggestion for a source of soft lead that I am sure has been posted here before, Most Electrical Contractors that deal in High and Medium voltages deal with a cable sheath called "Paper and Lead" and some have large scrap piles of the stuff, they scrap the copper but some dont fool with the lead do to the low scrap prices, Last time I asked my main contractor for some he asked where my truck was parked and said he would drop me some off, My F-250 front wheels were almost off the ground that afternoon, this lead is very soft and pliable.

Rick

[WHITETAIL]

Wolf28, I have tried both WW, and pure lead out of a front stuffer. Now I only use puer lead. Because when you need to pull a ball. The pure lead is easyer to get the puller in to. Plus a ball from pure lead is smaller than a ball from WW lead.

[carpetman]

Thanks Dye. Do you find it better to let them rust? Do you get them at yard sales?

[waksupi]

Wolf28, I have tried both WW, and pure lead out of a front stuffer. Now I only use puer lead. Because when you need to pull a ball. The pure lead is easyer to get the puller in to. Plus a ball from pure lead is smaller than a ball from WW lead.

Welcome aboard, Whitetail. Do you mean to tell us you may have dry balled your rifle at some time in the past? I only do it two or three times a year, anymore. There are those who have, and those who will! If someone tells me they never dry ball, I know they haven't been shooting long. Looks like you've been around awhile!:kidding:[smilie=s:

[44man]

Oh boy, dryballing! I use such large balls and tight patches that there is no way to remove one except to shoot it out. I broke a ram rod trying once. Always happens when shooting with friends and shooting the bull while loading.

[Leftoverdj]

I premelt on a $8.95 wally world hot plate with a Goodwill HEAVY aluminum saucepan...total cost $9.95


Bill

Better you than me. Too many reports of sudden failure of aluminum in smelting for me to even consider it.

[montana_charlie]

Has anybody ever tried making muffins in an ingot mold?
I did! Donated them for the High School bake sale.
And, because of the backward 'N' (or Cryllic 'I'), they brought in enough to do more than buy new helmets for the football team...they paid for a whole new gym!
CM

[MT Gianni]

MT Charlie, You gotta be in Conrad or Choteau for us to believe that one. Gianni

[wolfe28]

Thanks for all the great advice. Like I said, I'm new at this, so I'll take all the info I can get. The main reason I was going to use wheel weights is because of the number of tire shops here in town. I figured they would be the easist thing to get inexpensively (my wife and I are on a fairly tight budget). I really didn't have any idea, aside from a plumbing supply place, on where to get cheap, pure lead. I'll look into the electrical contractors scrap piles (and since my brother is an electritian in Ohio, he might be able to get me some as well).

Things I left out of the original post: my TC New Englander has a 1:48 twist, and I am planning on shooting patched round balls predominantly. I will also be trying some mini-maxi balls for bigger game (provided I get the chance at some point, right now, I just bag my limit on paper), but the round ball will be the main load in this one.

Now for a few more questions. SharpsShooter mentioned oven annealing round balls made from wheel weights. Would letting the shot air cool instead of quenching it in water have the same effect? Also, in my copy of ABC's of Reloading, in the section on casting you own bullets, it states that you should stir the molten lead often, to keep the tin component mixed in. Wouldn't it be possible to just not stir the lead for a while, and then skim the tin and antimony off the top? This would/should leave you with relatively pure lead, shouldn't it?

Thanks again,
D

[waksupi]

The bullets that are air cooled, will test as pure lead for about a week, before they start really hardening. You can put them in your freezer, and maintain this hardness prettty much indefinitely. If you don't store them in the freezer, after a few weeks, they will be up to WW hardness, and could probably benefit a bit from annealing. This will make it easier to get out those dry balls!

[Willbird]

After a few weeks your balls will be blue as well as dry ;-)

Bill

[Willbird]

Leftover said

"Better you than me. Too many reports of sudden failure of aluminum in smelting for me to even consider it.
__________________
"

I started doing it thus before I really KNEW that..I will add that if one were to do that, one should keep the temp just liquid, and put a 1/2" steel plate under the pot. the element has a lot of surface area, and the pan is THICK :-)

I would use my HF cast iron dutch oven but the iron loses too much heat(too much surface area radiating is my guess) to use it on the wally world hotplate :-(

Bill

[floodgate]

wolfe28:

Under normal casting conditions, the tin and antimony will NOT separate from the alloy; that old wheeze comes up at least twice a month here. Over a LONG time, at high temperatures and without fluxing, there might me some differential oxidation of one or another of the constituents, but the effect would be scarcely noticeable.

floodgate

[44man]

What you must remember is that the closer you get to bore size, the softer the ball has to be. Guys that use a .490 ball and thin patch can get away with harder lead. Go to a .495 or .500 ball and you will NOT get the ball in the barrel short of a sledge hammer. You will need a steel ramrod and hammer to get it down the bore too. Do you think you could get a full metal copper bullet down the bore?
I get a lot of static over this, but the proper ball and patch should engrave the ball AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GROOVES .005". This means the lands must dig deep without ruining the patch, about .015". Some guys would almost say that they have no trouble with steel ball bearings.
If you pop a ball into the muzzle with a large, lubricated piece of patch and pull it back out, you should see the cloth pattern in the lead where the bottom of the grooves are. This is the proper fit to prevent blow by and burned out, torn patches plus the best accuracy.
The guys that say this is wrong are the ones that tell you that a throat size boolit is the only way to shoot other guns. Gee whiz, I can't see the difference. What makes a muzzle loader different then any other gun? I don't shoot undersize boolits in my smokeless guns and sure won't in my muzzle loaders. I will NEVER depend on a cloth patch to make up for proper ball fit. The maxi ball and R.E.A.L boolit are made to engrave the rifling when loaded. Is this wrong? Why not use a small linotype boolit that falls in the bore of it's own weight? Oh, I see, that is different then a round ball! I will argue about this forever and still get the same responses. All I can say is to try it yourself and find out. It depends on what you consider accurate and easy to load. With 50 some years of working muzzle loaders, pure lead is all mine will see. I also knew Wes Kindig and Bill large when they were alive and still know Dan Kindig. They knew what was right. I will never believe there is a better way. I learned from the best and from experience.

[44man]

I forgot to mention the "bump up theory", It doesn't work for accuracy, only to throw a lot of lead quick with fouled barrels, as in a battle. The reason some soldiers in the civil war carried different size boolits. A .58 Minie' sucks unless it fits the bore tight.

[Onlymenotu]

Heck yeah, use your WW. I used oven annealed WW for BPCR shooting until I happened on to a large batch of pure lead. Oven annealing is easy. Cast your round ball or boolits as usual. Place them in a suitable pan and place in the oven. Set the temperature to 400* and walk away for an hour. turn off the oven after the hour and crack the door to allow the heat to escape. Let them cool and go shoot. They will work as good as the pure lead after annealing.


SS

WOW Great Idea you may have just saved me some time * remeltdown time & or casting time*

as I cast up some Lee 250 grn R.E.A.L's... out of soft lead and they loaded and shot fine I thought ( 1st mistake thinking) these will load eazy enuff out of ww:roll: wrong[smilie=1: :roll: and yea I did read the mold box witch said USE ONLY PURE LEAD[smilie=1: but what do those guy's know anyway:oops: :shock:

[montana_charlie]

You gotta be in Conrad or Choteau for us to believe that one.
If I said Fairfield would you believe?
CM

[MT Gianni]

Nah, I know the gas guy and I thinks he's pretty smart so I figure the rest can't be too far back. Gianni.